Kolkatta saree market drawn by Surat embroidery

April 4, 2009 (India)

Surat has been ruling the roost across the vast Indian markets in the sale of synthetic sarees and now after giving the weavers of banarasi embroidered sarees a run for their money, the Surat weaving community has cast an eye on the lucrative Kolkatta market.

The embroidery industry is well entrenched in the textile city of Surat and is supposed to have the largest concentration of embroidery machines in the country, because now after the banarasi saree weavers, it is now the turn of the Kolkatta embroidery saree industry to feel the heat.

The main reason for this turnaround is the cost competitiveness of the embroidery industry in Surat, who work on the latest computerized machinery which has cut costs of embroidery by more than half, when compared with those prevailing in Kolkatta.

The Kolkatta based embroidered saree manufacturers now prefer to get the work done in Surat, because of this huge cost in savings since most of the embroidery in Kolkatta is till done by hand which is a time consuming and a costly process.

To get a better understanding of the intricacies of the preference for Surat by the Kolkatta saree manufacturers, Fibre2fashion spoke to Mr Pramod Chaudhary, Managing Director of Pratibha Industries, who is an unmatched manufacture and exporter of synthetic fabrics.

Mr Chaudhary, said, “Medium range sarees from synthetic fabric dispatched from Kolkatta are mainly being embroidered in Surat. Surat was hub for synthetic market but now is also fast developing its embroidery sector on large scale and is becoming popular day-by-day”.

He added, “The main reasons being that, it is more economical & several varieties of embroidery machines are available here and there are approximately 60,000-70,000 computerized embroidery machines in Surat alone”.